Olympic Games, video games, being cool

The relationship between the Panthers and the Olympics is interesting. Players will sit in soft chairs and watch swimming and basketball and boxing highlights on the two flat screen television sets.

Running back DeAngelo Williams had a different take. He was walking past one of the big screens in the Wofford Student Union Tuesday morning, saw water polo and stopped.

“They have water soccer?” he asked.

When the other TV flashed highlights of Madden 09, the EA Sports video game, a group of players who had been passing by stopped, and several were so moved they began to hoot. Replace Olympic baseball with the Madden NFL video game and television ratings jump, I guarantee.

We’ve been in camp long enough that we should know the players without a roster. So when No. 85 ran deep down the right side in Monday morning’s scrimmage, snatched the ball out of the air and ran to the end zone, I thought, “All right, 85.”

I didn’t want the other media guys to know that I didn’t know who 85 was, so I said, “Man, you have to love 85. And you can’t be surprised by what he did because that’s what he does.”

I waited for somebody to give me 85’s name. Nobody did.

Who is 85, I asked.

Nobody knew.

He is, of course, Chad Upshaw, a tight end out of

Buffalo

.

Remember that name.

I will.

I was sitting with an ESPN personality at lunch and one of the Panthers' employees said, “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

The ESPN guy said he didn’t think so.

The Panther employee insisted and asked him what he did.

I work for ESPN, the guy said.

What do you do for them?

The ESPN guy pointed to a TV screen and said, “I do that show.”

Cool.

Speaking of cool, I was standing with the Observer’s Charles Chandler at the same time he appeared on ESPN. So he’s standing next to me and he’s on TV. Technology is so amazing.